VISION Spotlight

With nonurban areas in the United States making up 97 percent of the land but only 19 percent of its population, religious serving in rural ministries cover a lot of ground. Here’s a look at some of the ways sisters, brothers, and priests are making inroads in America’s backcountry.

Song and verse are among the oldest ways of praising God, and the impulse to be generative is one of the main components of a call to religious life, so it’s not surprising that poets are part of the vast array of creative religious.

Like plants, people, too, need to germinate in the right environment before they bloom. One monastic sister learned this lesson from tending her garden. Other religious learn similar lessons by their nurture of nature.

Since the arrival of a small group of sisters in New Orleans almost 300 years ago, Catholic women religious have educated, cared for, and served millions of Americans. A recent traveling exhibit tells their story.

VISION received many items about the art of members of religious communities. Here is the art and artists who were not featured in print and digital editions of the 2011 Catholic Religious Vocation Discernment Guide, as well as more about the artists whose work appears on page 136 of the magazine.

VISION ASKED VOCATION MINISTERS in the U.S. and Canada to recommend some of the best books on life as a priest, religious sister, or religious brother. What follows is a list of some of the good reading they recommend.

Elated or Frustrated?

"Religious life ought to promote growth in the Church by way of attraction. The Church must be attractive. Wake up the world! Be witnesses of a different way of doing things, of acting, of living! It is possible to live differently in this world.” -- Pope Francis